[sebreid]

This is currently my prototype for the SSA new Story formatting, replacing the old urine yellow background from when i did site design without my colour adjusting contact lenses <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif">

I am trying to get ALL stories formatted into a design simular to this. And create a new template per author making it faster to do overall updates.

Need to know what you think/ needs changing/ ideas on improving the overall look and feel of the story

The actual story content isnt important, as it is being updated soon anyways <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif">

Sebbo

[Seelie]

Generally speaking, you either skip a line between paragraphs or indent the first line. Both is redundant. And I like the look of skipped lines over the indention. Although the amount of space skipped seems to vary a bit between one and two lines.

I like the feedback e-mail at the bottom. But up top, I'd move the author's name to right below the title of the story instead of adjacent to the first line of text. For the record, I'm ambivalent about the whole "By Sebbo" or just "Sebbo" bit.

I think you might want to have an "official" way to handle major breaks, such as scene changes or chapter changes within a single document, so that you don't have some stories with a horizontal rule, some with a line of all dashes, and some with a line of bold text and a sub-head. It'd be nice to have one standard.

[Fret Pearson]

I agree with Seelie.  Skipping a line between paragraphs is enough.  And only one line.  Some of the paragraphs in the link you provided had a single space between them and others had several.  Too much blank space looks odd.

The color (black on white) is fine.  My opinion is to not define the color in the html file at all - that way the reader's browser settings will display the story in the colors the reader prefers.  (I have my background set to light bluish grey, for example.)  Black on white is fine, but sometimes those orange on green or dark purple on slightly darker purple stories cause me to click the "back" button as fast as possible.

Fret  

[sebreid]

thanks for the feedback guys.

The story i posted is a VERY rough plan of what the story formats on my site will be like. Breakout 5 as a story needs a lot of work to make it presentable. And i am going to work on every story until it gets to a stage where it is , well , perfectly formatted.

The colours are defined, but the white shouldnt be. I left them as B & W so that i wouldnt have to mess with dreamweaver styles and all that. I am trying to basically make all the stories look the same to make the site more consistent.

From the replies you gave, it is more the actual format fo the text which you feel needs more work, which is good. I will be working on them for a few weeks as i begin the work of formatting all 50 stories on the site.  

[Blake Isaac Gordon]

Hey if you're still taking feedback use a larger Font. I don't know about the rest of your readers but I hate printing out a story... feels like such a waste of paper for something I can read at any time. That small font tends to make me squint a little  

[sebreid]

i keep the text size the original from the author. Dont actually format the stories that much.

Mostly i format my own, as i know what i need doing, but as fr the others, well, i dunno. I know the new pages allows pretty good text zooming to make reading easier